


An Invitation

by TeddyPendergrass8



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:58:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeddyPendergrass8/pseuds/TeddyPendergrass8
Summary: Shinji makes a troubling visit to Rei's apartment.





	

The dead reading lamp fastened to the bed gave Shinji the impression of something that might be found in an operating room or fixed to a dentist’s chair. In its stead, moonlight streamed through the uncurtained windows and drew their shadows on the cracked tile in front of them; hers appeared not to move while his own trembled as if it might leap from the floor at any moment, sitting side by side on the bed facing the dark interior of the room. They looked on as dust motes blinked in and out of the wide berth of light. He smoothed a crease in his pant leg, hoping the fabric would discreetly dry up his sweating palms. Dry swallow. The mattress had no give, though it creaked absurdly for every movement they made.

From outside, across the street where a row of machines massive enough to rival the apartment bloc stood working, even at this hour of night, came the continuous and rhythmic clangs of metal. Something drew, then swooped and fell like a hammer blow, retracted itself before drawing again to the topmost height of its arc, falling and winding up once more with scarcely a second separating each stage. Shinji felt his own ragged breathing through the din and the question of intent, unanswered from earlier, returned to him. Head heavy in consideration, he was brought back to himself. The room, the lamp, the bed, the door, his hands, legs, hers beside him, rose up in his vision. He considered what might be said to break the current silence, gone on for how long he could not remember. Neither had made a sound since being seated. Responses ( _So why did you… When should we… Rei, I… Well we really should…)_  would materialize within him before breaking apart, flashing for a moment then dissolving slowly back into static. Nothing to say; or too much interference, anyway. Shinji’s hands retreated back into his lap awkwardly. The fingers felt clumsy and unarticulated, as if they had meshed together into a lumpy rubber mass when he wasn’t paying attention. He focused on the right hand and rolled it into a loose fist, unrolled it, rolled it again. The space between fingers and palm was a cooling shaft of air in his damp grip. He caught himself doing this and hoped she hadn’t seen.

Even with much of the space shrouded in darkness, he could tell she had tidied up beforehand. The discarded bandages, pill bottles, empty beakers, fresh spools of gauze – along with the grime sported by nearly every surface in the room, concentrating in the cracks and dark under table edges – the stacks of folded, well-worn books, trash bags full of cheap instant food Misato wouldn’t have touched; all had vanished. Yellowing periodicals gathered in fistfuls about the apartment that promised Longer Lashes, Fuller Hair In Six Weeks in gaudy colored print had been swept away with the wind. Deep black smudges resembling spilled oil or scorch marks disappeared as if they had seeped through to the next floor of their own accord. What time it must have taken. The sheets, before they took their spots, were neat, iron-smooth. Only his father’s glasses remained conspicuously in their place. Reflection from the light pouring onto the floor caught in the lenses to glower there while Shinji continued scanning the room, each new surface gleaming with its fill of the moon.

It was a straight shot to the door, he noticed, down the short hall that seemed to double as kitchen space. He might be through the portal, lapping warm night air as he raced home before she had raised her head to see him go. And did she even want him there? Rei could be asleep or dead beside him, motionless as she was. When Shinji first approached the bed, she had flashed a meek smile and fastidiously pulled down the edge of her shorts as if self-conscious, then gave a thousand-yard stare to the wall and that had been the last of any communication, bodily or otherwise, since.

He realized he was nipping at the flesh below his pinkie with the thumb and knuckle of the other hand, as if to prod some sensation back into it, and quit. The thought that Rei might not even be attentive to him sitting there at the moment – whether because truly out of it or simply daydreaming – was, in fact, relieving. Probably she had her own fantasies, her own designs playing in her head as she sat stock still upon the edge of the mattress, and he was just one more phantasm she took up into consideration every now and again, caught between two fingers and revolved slowly, deliberately, for inspection, like an old plaything awaiting its sentence to the toychest or dustbin; just as she might have been to him. But still he had not come in order to sit the hours by together like two space cadets, or even to talk, sparingly and soft, as they had in the past. He knew that much. So why couldn’t he speak? Why couldn’t he let himself speak? To be sure, he was waiting for something, though what he wouldn’t have been able to name, whether out of actual ignorance or propriety; some sign he could proclaim only once it had come.

What he had fallen to telling himself was that this was not Ayanami. She was, yes, in outward appearance the same as ever. But if the afternoon had been an indication of anything, it was that Rei was out on a limb here asking him over to her apartment in this way – or else that he knew so exceedingly little about her that the invitation should come as a surprise at all. Certainly the road to this point had been paved upon melodrama, he thought, and the traversing of it uncharacteristic for them both, but for Rei especially. The invitation, the hour, the present mood, her attire… all would have smacked of arch setup and trope had he not felt it, not lived it in dizzying detail. Something was off which he could not place, which he felt would get them off the unforgiving bed and break the silent-spell if only he could find it; and yet he also felt, with a tinge of irony, that the first step to finding it  _was_  simply to get off the bed,  _was_  to say something, anything at all at this advanced point. But he was waiting.

Yet the suspense of sitting there, on her mattress, quietly simmering sweat while he tried not to notice the low, ambient thrum of the kitchen appliances or the repeating muffled crash from outside of what had always sounded to him like the pistons of some huge metal derrick or how her pale thighs fanned themselves out atop the bedsheet in the corner of his eye or the general dinginess of the apartment or the stifling air or the way in which one nostril squeaked when he exhaled as if blocked or the dark smear his hand left on his pant leg where he had wiped at it or the bald fact that being in this room unavoidably conjured up the circumstances of his last, first, and only previous visit to the apartment, embarrassing him still, even now; this all, goaded him to make a leap. Whatever had taken her over, he said, had shined its eyes holding the apartment door and placidly invited him in, was not her, could not be her, and he demanded to know just what had stolen her and slipped on her skin easily as a suit to parade around like some mock-up version of Rei.  _This_  was supposed to be the one whom he had watched resign herself to death time and time again? No, he would rather believe possession, or mania, hysteria, than that that person could be the same seated beside him now.

As if from an impossibly long distance away for them to still be sitting on the same piece of bedding, in his peripheral he noticed her shift and deflate, as if sighing, then decline her head to pick at a fingernail. So he should ask. “What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Why do you pilot Unit-00?  What do you think of father, or the Eva series? What do you think of Asuka, Misato, Dr. Akagi, the angels? of me? What is going on here? How does it involve either of us?”

So he told himself. He retreated again, waffling. Many more scenes had presented themselves in the previous twilight hours – most useless, melodramatic. Encountering her now, there was simply something he was unable to name or point to that could not be reconciled with what he had known about Rei. And what did he know about her, really? Nothing. That he thought she was nice and quiet, and maybe somehow more; and that he hoped she thought of him (if she thought of him) as nice and quiet too, with the potential for more. But what was 'more'? And thinking all this as he did, he still lacked the courage for so much as to face her once confronted in the flesh – and her silhouetted form on the floor yielded nothing. And to the left of it lay the spot where he’d once fallen on her in a tangle of her own underwear.  _What was he doing here?_  He watched his upturned palm brighten with a new sheen of sweat and inwardly cursed.

On the small counter of what could be called the kitchenette were several crisp, white grocery bags, the handles forming stiff peaks in the air like a range of snowcapped mountains. Next to them, a cutting board with knife and a tall pot.

An opening. He must try now or leave forever.

The sound sputtered and died in his throat as it formed, requiring him to cough before speaking and so shattering the silence that had accumulated around them as if he had let out a roar. Rei looked up for the first time since sitting, again seeming to register him only dully, delayed or muffled somehow by thoughts he could not discern. She turned to Shinji. Some internal furnace clicked on within him and the heat rose in his blood. He didn’t yet dare to turn and face her, marshalling his words for the well-meant question to come. Inhale.

Alright; false starts be damned. Shinji spoke. “Were you about to make dinner, Ayanami? I can wait if you’d like, or come back another time. I don’t want to inconvenience you.” And out. Muttered all in the same wispy breath, he said to himself. And that damned crashing didn’t help. Maybe she couldn’t hear after all that.

Hoping to draw away her gaze, he nodded at the bags and pointed. Her eyes followed the length of his arm all the way to the fingertip, then slid back down toward his face as if on a zipline, seeming not to register the question.

His cheeks must already be red, Shinji thought. The heat was rising; she would notice. The surface of his skin felt lit like molten metal. It was only a matter of time.

He dropped his arm, it fell to the leg beneath like a burning log.

Could she really not hear? Why wasn’t she saying anything? When was she going to stop playing the halfwit? Rei had invited  _him_  here, and on some half-crazed conceit he had actually come. ‘Visit me tonight.’ So what did she want? He had laid prone in his bed all afternoon as the sun slowly fell, asking the same tired variations until suddenly he became aware of the shadowed room and the aura of the moon filtering in like smoke. Heading to her apartment bloc in the breezeless night, and having turned it over any number of times and come up short, that embarrassed memory of his first trip there bobbed back up to consciousness like a persistent pool-floatie and he seemed to cringe and hurry his step through the blessedly quiet streets.

Shinji knocked. After a moment debating whether it had been too lightly, he went to knock again and remembered the buzzer.

On reaching the apartment, he remembered being unable to halt the feeling that something about her had changed in the interim. Since first hello, Rei had always had the straightened posture of a scarecrow, and until a few hours ago he had taken this fact to be a constant; now, challenged even as it were, she seemed already to be reverting back. Earlier in the day she had looked… what? Sultry wasn’t the word, though maybe for her it qualified as such – pretty though – limber, relaxed. Her very joints seemed at ease as she–  But now, opening the door, sweeping an arm back to invite him in, Rei stood beside the door frame, statuesque and wordless, showing the way as if some stone sentinel commissioned then forgotten there for years. Shorts and a wispy t-shirt belied the inexpressive face; a startling change of dress. She let him pass then pressed on toward the bed, centered in a stream of moonlight coming through the far windows, and sat. She motioned for him to do the same. The initial invitation had hardly been so frigid.

What must have only been minutes felt like hours since that time. His anxiety, Shinji felt, was boiling over now. When would he be able to leave the apartment? and how do so tactfully? Clearly she had changed her mind, or her stance, or her mood, or by God something had been changed, for now she sat there, sweating him like she hadn’t heard him practically shouting, they were so close together on the bed he couldn’t turn to speak without tonguing her ear. The specious nature of the scene came crashing down on him. Invited – alone – to a girl’s room – at night – without any pretense beyond “a visit” – the door answered in clothes he had neither seen nor reckoned her owning, let alone wearing – not a peep from either though their thighs were nearly touching on the mattress where she slept. This must be some big joke, he thought. All a gag. The skin along Shinji’s arms began to prickle as he imagined for a moment her suddenly standing to face him and laughing. The big reveal: he had been wrong all along. Stupid. Stupid Shinji. Her throat crackled with the laughter she could no longer contain and had likely been hoarding for just that moment. Would his classmates now descend from the ceiling like preying spiders? Was someone waiting in the wings with a camcorder to capture his embarrassed (and embarrassing) reaction? Stupid Shinji, silly Shinji. He felt his shoulders clench, and his limbs begin to knot in defensive anticipation when, as abruptly as it had come, the apparition dismissed itself. He drew a deep breath intended to calm when the thought struck him again:  _What was he doing here?_

Nerves either failing or getting the better of him, he turned and repeated his question. Rei’s expression was blank as before. But Shinji watched as she studied him, eyes gravitating toward the lips as he spoke, thoughtfully pausing to process the sounds. Something like recognition came across her face and she rose quickly as if just remembering a forgotten item to-do. So at least something was going on in there, he thought. As she stood, her legs which had spread out upon the bed sitting lifted and retreated back toward bone. “Yes. I was going to make dinner. Have you eaten yet?” She went to the counter, the bags and their contents noisily shifting as she unloaded them. The crinkling plastic filled the air. “I bought enough for two.”

The seal was broken, and almost instantly the boy relaxed. Contact made.

Eyeing the ruffle in the sheets she’d departed, the thought flashed that if he touched it he might be able feel a residue of her heat there.

“No I haven’t yet, actually. Eaten dinner.”

“What?”

White noise from the bags rolled around them in the room. Rei clattered an old pot onto the stove and the burner sparked to life beneath with a dial turn. The sink’s faucet left running to heat up produced a steady stream. The hubbub nearly overtook the pistons working outside, but not quite. Shinji wondered just what Ayanami’s neighbors thought of them, or what they might be able to hear of their proceedings, their “conversation”, then considered that probably she had none. And no one from NERU would regularly make the trek out here. A girl alone with her machines.

“I said no.”

Rei paused her perusing, followed by the barest of turns toward Shinji. “It should only be a few minutes to get ready. Will you stay then?”

His hands had strayed again, one picking tirelessly at the other until he separated them.

“Sure,” he replied.

Carefully removing them one by one, she placed the items in a line on the counter like a magician counting out her tricks before the show. A package wrapped in neat butcher paper smacked wetly next to a gaggle of onions and assorted greens. Suddenly spritely, Rei would perform a subdued pirouette to turn and take something from the cabinets on the adjacent wall, shirt fluttering around her as she went. A light reddish stain rimmed the package’s bottom and liquid seeped out and spread along the cutting board in tiny rivulets. Despite no change in expression, she seemed happier; and though he soon felt the heat abating, Shinji wavered. The focus was off, but how fast Rei had seemed to change gears troubled him. Near catatonic moments ago, she was a whirlwind of activity. The feeling of events proceeding which were part of some overall script he had not been given beforehand pervaded him. Rei was both herself and not, her movements giving off the impression of grace while still being mechanical and matter-of-fact as any done in the service of a routine practiced a thousand times before. He could not say for sure why he was there – on Rei’s bed, in Rei’s apartment, observing them both do one trivial thing then another as if from a sideline. He should just ask. What would be simpler? She balled up another empty grocer’s bag and pushed it to the far end of the counter. Shinji watched it slowly unfold and expand outward in uneven fits. But he was afraid to burst whatever bubble they appeared to be operating in at the moment, the one-sided play he had been invited to without a seeming role. The sense of being guided along, while still not without its uncertainties, felt… easy.

Continuing the unpacking in determined silence, Shinji watched Rei. The observer once more, he felt he couldn’t help but note the figure before him; her profile rail-thin; the untucked shirt that should have pulled taut above the waist instead billowing about the concavity of her stomach like a sheet clipped to a drying line; shorts that might have fit snugly on a child half their age. When had she ever dressed like this before? he wondered. And by God, how regularly did she eat? The crusted, empty containers previously scattered about the apartment were evidence enough of some form of appetite, or else a fidelity to faking it, but when did the girl actually sit and chow down? What did she do when not by her Eva, for that matter – what form did her daily life take? It must be closer to his than Asuka’s, anyway, he thought, remarking once more he knew so very little about either. There had always been something strange, almost para-human about Rei, but surely that didn’t extend past personality; biology had to take effect somewhere. They were all part animal here. He certainly felt as much.

Rei had stooped low to pick up some fallen morsel (he couldn’t remember her dropping anything) and was now on hands and knees trying to fish it out from beneath the refrigerator.

He rose, thankful for the interruption. “Do you need any help?”

She faced away. For several moments there was no response. Suddenly Rei splayed herself out on her stomach, arm disappearing up to the shoulder beneath the fridge. “No, I’m fine.”

Shinji didn’t move. Fighting in himself between taking his seat again and remaining in place, in order to at least look ready for assistance, he had stood there too long, committing to neither. The awareness of this purgatorial middle-distance grew the more he pushed off action. Now, as she wriggled around on the floor before him, he took on the role of uneasy lookout – painted himself away as spectator. It would be odd to return to the bed after so long an interval, he thought, caught between purposes. I’ll wait here to see if she needs anything.

The wispy shirt that lifted from the skin and swung with her every step had ridden slightly up, seeming to bunch and recede toward the shoulder-line. The furnace in his lower gut roared.

Quickly, he glanced from the ruddy cabinets to the wall, spying a never before seen clock in the corner; turned to the door, the ingredients laid out orderly on the counter, the large hollow pot, the bed, then the fridge clear of any tchotchkes or clutter, a peek down at her progress on the floor, the bed, door, cabinets, trying to let his thoughts stray, door, periodically brought back by the sharp little gusts Rei would let out then catch in her throat, bed. “Almost…” she hissed.

A bloody stream from the package of meat reached an edge on the cutting board and pooled there as if it had met with an invisible dam. Didn’t she hate meat? The muscles of her back strained, bubbling up beneath the skin before settling, then rising again. Arched in the air, her rump moved about like a restless buoy and set the rhythm for her whole body; her blanched toes spread delicately out against the cool tile. He was watching now. Transfixed, he studied the seam in her shorts and blinked back the thought that asked what its denim would feel like brought against his lips at that moment. So try it on your own jeans, jackass, he sneered. Straps he had seen earlier in vague outline beneath her shirt as if through water threatened to reveal themselves as the collar shifted. Presently her toes curled, and the legs they led from straightened, quivered as she readied herself for the final stretch, then like a punch of air the breath left her lungs in exultation:

“Got it.”

He continued to look on uncertainly while she stood and let her shirt fall back down and brushed past to set the recovered pepper-grinder by the other groceries, taking care to push the rest of the crowded items away from the edge. For the first time since commencing with dinner, they traded glances (“It’s fine. You can sit down”), she inscrutable as always. And what was Shinji to her?

His presence in the kitchen/hall left it cramped, the both of them practically pressed together between the wall and counter. Rei continued preparing the meal, carefully skirting around and once bumping into him until he finally stepped back into the room. Shinji wanted to say something, but as before, the words shirked him. Despondence was beginning to settle in before he burst out:

“Rei, I think I’d better come back another time and let you eat. You’re clearly busy right now, and it feels like I’m just– well, I’ll get going. You have a good night.”

“You’re here already. Please stay,” she said without looking up. Some minor muscle in her cheek went taut; she spoke as if her jaw were set firmly in place. “Just sit back down and try to relax, this won’t take long.”

He had made no movement toward the exit, even her meager frame made the hall impassible. The refrigerator sputtered slightly as if to clear its throat before resuming humming. He cursed, as ever, his indecisiveness, her opacity, so on. He made a shaky half-step in the direction of her and the door.

“Well then at least let me help out a little – it’ll go faster that way. I can’t relax if I’m sitting here watching you do everything.”

“Sorry?” Rei had returned to unpacking and now tucked away the last rustling bag, loudly crushing it into a bin without facing him.

“Would you like some help?” Shinji tried forcing a smile, on the off-chance she might turn again. “I like to think I’m an alright cook by now. It feels as if I must make dinner for Misato and Asuka nearly every night.”

“Why would I need help?” Likely expecting no response, she hefted the pot into the sink and switched off the tap at an appropriate mark, continuing to float from point to point around the cramped kitchenette.

What could one say to that? Shinji sank back down to the bed, defeated. So he would be there for dinner. While having no truly concrete expectations, an hour or so spent engaged in this stilted small-talk – or more likely, silence – over some tepid meal had hardly topped the list of possibilities for the evening. Plus however long it took to bake, broil, or braise this thing of hers. Well. This was it all along, wasn’t it? Just a call to eat together; odd in itself coming from Rei, but ultimately innocent. Barring poison, what sinister motive could be hid behind a home-cooked meal? All those thoughts that had sprouted up like weeds whiling away the evening seemed foolish now and he scolded himself for ever admitting them.

Still this account of things didn’t properly explain to him their encounter earlier. It had been early afternoon, synchronization tests ended for the day. The high, empty halls of NERU rang out with his footsteps on the walk back to the locker room. Shinji braved the shower stalls to find no other soul around, and disrobed to scrub himself under the hot water. Washing, he imagined Asuka doing likewise in some nearby portion of the complex, and saw as if he were there her towel draped limply over a bench by the lockers, soapy, wet footprints dotting the smooth floor of the women’s showers… He shuttered the image; a resolution he’d made, to follow at least here when he could. Fingers pruned, damp-haired, and freshly clothed, he emerged from the lockers, earbuds already snaking up to find his ear. As he stepped into the hall a figure rose in his peripheral. “Rei.” He said the name instinctively, perhaps a little too loud in his surprise, as here Rei balked and hesitated to speak when clearly she had been waiting. She was still in a plugsuit with the pieces of her headset in hand. He fired off a few pleasantries to fill the space left for uneasy silence and put away his music. “How are you? I, um, don’t usually see you around after testing. Just taking a stroll?” Though she kept them lowered, he could sense at the edges something different about her eyes. “Or did you want to talk?... Ayanami?”

“Ikari.” Rei was flushed and panting lightly as if she had hurried there. Cutting off to take a deep breath and releasing it slowly, she met his gaze, and in her soft register said: “Would you be free to come to my apartment later this evening?”

Shinji tried to parse the question. Her eyes, most often a lusterless red, as if the shine had been wiped matter-of-factly off of a ruby, were more pronounced now that he saw them, and something like the usual cool detachment was gone. Whatever quality of color lets the light through made him feel he could be really talking to, really seeing Rei. Possibly for the first time since… well, quite a while anyway. It was exciting, frightening, an utter mystery to him.

Still motionless, the silence had seemed to reach a fever pitch by the time Rei lurched forward, closing the gap in a single step, and swung her arms around his shoulders. Their breath mingled. A shock ran through Shinji’s body that petrified as it went, until he felt he could not have moved any more than if it were a marble cut of himself stood in the same spot. A sharp crack from the two headset pieces as they knocked together in her hand hung suspended in the air well past the moment of collision.

She spoke somehow even quieter than before, and if all sense had not fled him he might have perceived the tiny warble in her voice or with what uneasiness her arms were slung across him or the way her knee had only grazed the inside of his and then instantly retreated.

“Visit me tonight.”

For only the second time, Rei smiled at Shinji.

He was a fool, he told himself, accepting the piping bowl that trailed steam in its wake like the chimney stack on an old ship. A fool and a coward yet. Rei retook her spot on the bed beside him, in the ruffle in the sheets that was now cold, and sipped her soup. The bed creaked. They ate in quiet for a while.

And what could eyes tell? He was no reader of those well-trod windows to the soul: body language he knew was a complex amalgam of the minutest gestures, none which he could helpfully remember from that time just hours ago. Parted mouth, stippled skin, bated breath... sweaty palms, nervous tic. The way the downy hairs stood from one’s arm could make all the difference as far as intent went, and an iris measured one millimeter wider could spell harm or amity for…

The memory of his first trip there resurfaced. Shimmering heat, crashing metal, an oppressive humidity to the air. The complex was not well ventilated. Excitement and novelty at any kind of view into Ayanami’s life whatsoever – someone he had only just met and yet almost envied for her relationship to father. No, did envy. He wondered after the secret that made Gendo show affection for this stranger and not his own son. He remembered the crispness of her ID in his hand, even as it began to sweat from holding it so long, the door as it slid open. Then suddenly he would be pinning her, wordless, to the floor where they’d fallen, her eyes opaque and seeming to look right through and beyond him. They betrayed no feeling. His hand pressed.

Shame flared up, as always, whenever Shinji reached this point in his mental review; shame flecked with something like indignation. But why should I feel bad for thinking things like that? he would pose. Aren’t thoughts like that ‘natural’? Don’t people simply call it ‘natural’ for one to feel such-and-such when confronted with such a… body? It’s her fault for– no, she should know better than to leave her door all…  I’m not perverted,  _I’m_ not hurting anyone,  _I’m_  not–

Rei shifted on the bed. Had she said something? He looked down. Mindlessly, he had cleaned his bowl. She was still working on hers beside him, listless. In a moment of spite he wondered if she could be anything but. Dead fish.

God, would he ever get past this childishness? The two of them had put their lives on the line together or separately seven times since then, humanity avoided annihilation seven times. And this was what sprang to mind? The nude figure viewed through his father’s splintered lens; the imagined granular feeling he tried to savor on his palm where it had touched her, as if breasts, like chalk, left a powder. (Had he squeezed in the moment? Had her legs ever so slightly parted?) What an ass he was. This visit wasn’t made to indulge his desire, or otherwise test the possibility of ‘more’. He had determined to say what needed saying between two children forced to shoulder the world before they’d even known it, and to ask what needed asking. Chiefly, what the state of her mind was, and how it related to his (and what that was to begin with). That was why he was there. There should be some kind of rapport, he had said. We don’t all need to be this way. He cast another sidelong glance. His eyes, he could feel now, were bleary for whatever reason, the lids heavy and lowered to disguise his looking; chin tucked and head mostly rolled down toward the fiction of soup his spoon still idled in. Even now, after all his invective, his castigation, his parade of self-criticism, he looked at Rei and found in himself above all an unmistakable arousal: arousal both for the girl beside him now and for the fantasies that had prodded his perceptions and led him to that point perched on her covers. He felt the stirring in his lap below, the weight and recent heat of the bowl gathered there in a pleasing pressure.

No, things did not need to be as they were – a change could come from anywhere, and at any time. But so often he felt that their bodies impeded this end (they were only one thing at one moment, after all), forming a gulf between which could only be broached by the right word, the right gesture, the right touch. And he was some insubstantial husk, forever blundering and playing catch-up with the real flesh-and-blood types so embodied; a pitiful shell for the designs of others.

Well words, clearly, were right out. Gesture might as well have been touch (no good with words, you see), and all touch was improper when it came from one who sniveled as he did, who cried and cowered as he did, alone in his despair. The things these hands have done… What  _I’ve_  done, he said, almost aloud in his reverie. Look what mess he’d made of a simple dinner invitation. He had meditated more on her skin than her soul, Shinji thought, and prized the wrapper above its contents. What room was left for growth, in that case? he asked. What left for friendship? That afternoon he’d been swimming in imagined talk, images, caresses. By evening he’d sampled them all, fitting each one at a time into his schema for this nebulous date. And now he walked among their ruins like a traveler, studying arches, measuring columns and taking rock samples as if trying to divine the end of a long-dead civilization. Maybe he would be less inclined to apocalyptic if they weren’t fending off extinction themselves every few weeks.

_What was he doing here?_  He had no answer, couldn’t care anymore. Whatever the urge that brought him there, it had worn itself out. He recognized for the first time a dull ache that had settled in his limbs and all at once he was tired.

He was up and waving, thanking her before Rei could swallow her mouthful of broth, out the door by the time she had settled her bowl and stood to watch him leave. Fool.

The pillow was a comfort until he couldn’t feel it any longer and fell asleep. Coward.

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't find how to make this work like I wanted it to, so I'm putting it out to pasture. If anyone reads and enjoys, please feel free to say so.


End file.
